One can hardly praise the Turkish prime minister Erdogan high enough for the clever and bold words he said during his visit to the regime of the FRG, and which he corroborated after his return to Turkey: A Turk will remain a Turk, no matter how many FRG passports one may give him, and assimilation is a "crime against humanity" for to treat a Turk like a German, is to mistreat him.
The "Turkish question" which the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung sees looming up in its editorial from 12 February 2008 therefore does not exist, but merely a Turkish answer. And this answer is a slap in the face for Merkel and her consorts. And since the laugh is always on the loser, Erdogan demanded that the FRG import Turkish teachers as well as establish and pay for Turkish universities in Germany.
The Turks have not lost their old spirit of conquest, but have renewed and rejuvenated it. They have known for a long time now that they must conquer the centre of Europe in order to escape the revenge for the destruction of Christian Byzantium and to prevent their being expelled from Asia Minor, the ancient European area of expanded settlement. For this reason, they have again and again stood before Vienna. But they never managed to intrude and penetrate into Central Europe in such depth and numbers as currently. They therefore now have no reason to behave meekly. They are in the position to go the full monty.
The self-confident Turkish state is a wholly different challenger to the FRG system than the Arab-Muslim individual terrorists. Should the Turkish state significantly contribute to the corruption of the FRG authority, then it will have played a useful, paradoxical role in the liberation of Germany; for the new Turkish threat will only be eliminated by the Fourth Reich with the expulsion of all foreigners from Germany.
